


This isn't going to end well

by Laekin



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 04:37:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7028914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laekin/pseuds/Laekin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik's thoughts as he gets Charles settled on the rocks in Cairo.  Or in other words, Erik considering just how badly this whole 'intimidate Charles' idea is going to go for Apocalypse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This isn't going to end well

**Author's Note:**

> It's been years since I've posted any fiction. This is really just a small drabble piece that started out as an answer for how Charles ended up with his suit coat under his head in Cairo. It turned into a bit of an Erik introspection.
> 
> It's also more pre-slash than actual slash, a blink and you miss it sort of thing, since Erik is still mourning his family.

“Get him settled, and destroy the chair.” En Sabah Nur commanded with a slow, graceful gesture of one large, armored hand before he turned to walk to the precipice of the rocks.

Psylocke stepped forward, her beautiful face set in an unattractive scowl as she appeared torn between obedience and a sharp retort; no doubt something derogatory about the unconscious man in the wheelchair and a comment about weakness. Erik’s fierce glare suggested she keep her comment to herself and back off, he could handle this.

Leaning over Charles’ unconscious form, he carefully began to divest his old friend of his sports coat. As he worked, his mind flashed to Nina as a baby and a toddler needing help with the sweaters and coats she had to wear to ward of the chill of rural Poland. Erik had never admitted it aloud but when his little girl had grown big enough to dress herself he’d felt a twinge of loss. Glances exchanged with Magda let him know he was not alone in this parental milestone, which had helped at the time.

Now, he gentle threaded Charles’ arms through the sleeves of the coat before pulling it away from his old friend’s body. Charles had muscled up over the ten years of wrestling his manual wheelchairs and navigating sitting transfers, so it took a bit more strength to move him around, but Nina had definitely wriggled more.

The memory came unbidden and Erik felt a fresh wave of grief kick him square in the chest. It left him dizzy, clinging to Charles’ shoulders despite the fact that his friend was unconscious and unable to offer deliberate aid. For just that moment, holding on to Charles helped ease the tightness around Erik’s heart, the clamp of pain that he didn’t believe would ever leave him.

When it passed, Erik frowned fiercely; renewed in his determination to obliterate the humans who had turned on him, who had refused to let him lead his life, despite his attempts to live peacefully among them. They had stolen his innocent family, cut down his sweet daughter’s life with no compassion or tolerance for a panicked child. Why should he care now, what Apocalypse had in store for the rest of them? They called him a monster? They were the monsters.

Reaching down he lifted Charles effortlessly out of the chair. Muscled across the torso or not, his friend was still relatively small and transferred easily from the chair down to the ground. Despite the rage and grief moving through him, Erik was careful as he laid Charles out on the rocks. Holding his shoulders and head against Erik’s own chest, the man known as Magneto, reached back to grab the sports coat, folding it into a make shift pillow to lay beneath his friend’s head.

Making sure that Charles’ legs were straightened, his lower back supported against the warm rocks as well, Erik looked down into his friend’s peaceful face. A strand of hair had settled awkwardly across Charles’ forehead and Erik reached out automatically to brush it aside. For a moment the hair tangled around his finger, dark brunette with shades of auburn and gold highlights and Erik felt another grief stricken constriction around his heart. He hadn’t realized, until this moment but Magda’s hair was the same curious mixture and would reflect the same fiery highlights when entangled around his long fingers. And though Charles’ eyes were peacefully closed and Magda’s only recently buried, they shared the same sweet, empathic blue.

Erik quickly headed the similarities off at the past, compartmentalized them away because they whispered at something he was in no emotional state to consider too deeply at the moment. Instead, he sat back on his heels, pulling his hand away from Charles and with a careless flick of his wrist, smashing the chair down to little more than scraps of scrap metal.

He looked over to En Sabah Nur broad shoulders, the mutant’s back still turned towards them, complete confidence that Erik was executing his orders, obedient to his command. Erik knew the man was anticipating the same sort of near slavish obedience from Charles, either as a result of what En Sabah Nur would offer his friend or out of fear for what this first mutant might do to him. Erik also knew, in his shattered, grief stricken heart, that En Sabah Nur was in for a rude awakening.

Looking back at Charles’ face, Erik anticipated the moment his friend would open his eyes. He could picture the slow, pained blinking (Charles had to have one hell of a headache after what happened in Cerebro) and then the slow, growing anger that would build in those large blue eyes. En Sabah Nur would no doubt play out his line about power and the strong standing atop the ruins of the weak. He’d offer Charles power beyond imagination (even now Erik nearly reeled beneath his own enhanced abilities) and Charles would tell this near god where to shove it.

Because no promise of power, no promise of personal gain, no _threat_ or attempt at intimidation was going to turn Charles’ head. When he woke up there was going to be hell to pay and Charles would take it out of En Sabah Nur’s hide. Erik had always wondered what it would take to truly anger his peaceful friend. Now that he suspected he’d found it all he could think was there was no way it would end well for Apocalypse. 

Lowering his head, Erik caught movement out of the corner of his eye and he instinctively, and protectively, shifted between it and Charles. But it proved to merely be young Ororo, drawn closer by youthful curiosity she couldn’t entirely contain. She was young, strong in the face of this madness but still very much a child and Erik couldn’t help thinking that she belonged at the Institute, as one of Charles’ students, not out here in the thick of this insanity.

As if sensing Erik’s tension the girl didn’t try to come any closer, but she exchanged a quick, uncertain look with him. It spoke to the misgivings that were beginning to grow in his chest; taken plant the moment En Sabah Nur had ported into the mansion to kidnap Charles. Though he knew he was expected to exhibit unconditional belief in Apocalypse’ plans for the world, the man’s sheer power, Erik couldn’t help feeling the first stirrings of doubt as he looked down at Charles.

Charles wasn’t going to stand for this. He wasn’t going to play ball and there was a storm brewing, one hell of a conflict and Erik knew Charles would not be standing alone, because Charles never stood alone. He never allowed any of them to stand alone, even when –like Erik- they did their best to push and shove him away. He was always there, his hand always extended to his family.

Discreetly resting his long fingers across Charles’ wrist, Erik glanced back towards Ororo, watching her for a long minute before he turned back to Charles. He knew Apocalypse had his mind blocked from Charles but it didn’t stop him thinking towards his friend.

_’It’s time to wake up, Charles. Now more than ever we need you to guide us, lead us through the darkness of this hour. I don’t know that I’ll be able to follow. Not this time, there is so much pain. But they need you.’_

It was no doubt simply coincidence but Erik felt Charles’ wrist twitch beneath his fingers. In the next instance his friend began to shift his head to the side, eyes squeezing tight as he made small, pained noises that indicated he was crawling towards consciousness. Erik quickly released his friend’s arm and moved to gracefully gain his feet, looking down as Charles continued to come awake. He spared a quick glance towards Apocalypse and then turned to look back to Ororo.

Now, things were about to get interesting.


End file.
